The Mobile Phone Club

The latest news and reviews from the Mobile Phone scene.

Thursday, 7 February 2008

EyeVibe = O2's LookatMe + 3's SeeMeTV

EyeVibe is a user generated content site formed from the amalgamation of network O2's LookatMe service and 3's SeeMeTV. It forms a service boasting over 60,000 videos uploaded by users of both networks. As well as being an online gallery for video content, the creators of clips also earn 10% from the fee of another user downloading it. The two networks claim to have paid out over £800,000 to users who have submitted clips.

Tuesday, 29 January 2008

O2 changes tariffs to give customers more

From the 1st February 2008 O2 contract customers will benefit from a new choice of pay monthly tariffs. Six price points will offer a set bundle of minutes and texts, further customised with additional bolt-ons.The three current tariffs for the Apple iPhone will be brought in line with these new options. This will mean a £35 tariff for an iPhone customer will offer three times the free calls and more than double the free texts, plus users will continue to receive 'unlimited' data access.

Monday, 28 January 2008

Virgin Mobile launch new tariff

UK MVNO Virgin Mobile are to introduce a new flat rate pay as you go tariff that sees all calls charged at 15p per minute, to any network. As an added incentive customers will receive 5 free mins or texts for every 5 mins of calls or 5 text messages charged for. Virgin Mobile are also introducing a customer loyalty scheme taking 10p for every £1 spent and creating a fund that the customer can then use towards purchasing a new handset.

Monday, 19 November 2007

Mobile wireless broadband moves one step closer

Under a United Nations agreement endorsed on Friday valuable UHF radio spectrum is to be freed up for use by mobile networks to provide high speed broadband services.

"For the first time, the decision will provide a common chunk of spectrum for mobile broadband services globally, boosting the market for new wireless technologies" reports FT.com

The 790-862 Megahertz band is going to be made available in Europe and offers the prospect of good quality, higher speed service for downloads of data and video in the future. It will also mean better coverage and cheaper wireless network set up costs due to the fequency travelling further and requiring less base stations.

Tuesday, 23 October 2007

Bebo Extra on your Orange mobile

UK operator Orange and the popular social networking site Bebo have partnered up to offer unlimited use of Bebo Mobile for just £3 a month.

"Orange customers will be able to sign up for a “Bebo Extra” which offers unlimited mobile access to Bebo.com and enables them to send comments by text message directly to their friends’ profile, receive immediate text message profile notifications and send Bebo Mails via text for just £3 a month."

If you’re an existing Bebo member you’ll be able to access the mobile version of the site via Orange World on your handset. If you don’t yet have a Bebo account, you can sign-up over at Bebo’s site, then text ‘Bebo’ to 1233 via your Orange phone.

Tuesday, 18 September 2007

Facebook.co.uk owned by ConnectU?

Earlier today I accidently stumbled on something... Now it's not really mobile phone based but I thought it worth bringing up somewhere since there appears to be nothing on Google that covers this at all.

Most people in the UK who have tried to access Facebook.com will have at some point accidently typed Facebook.co.uk to find there's nothing there. Sensing a gaping hole in the web-domination of such a large site I thought I'd check just who owns the domain and discovered something rather interesting.

The present registrant of Facebook.co.uk is listed as ConnectU. It only took a second to realise where I'd heard that name before. The company who have been in legal battles with Facebook for intellectual rights!

Now Facebook was launched in February 2004 and ConnectU in May 2004, but facebook.co.uk is listed as registered by ConnectU in December 2004, long after they would have known of the Facebook name. So what's going on? How has it been ignored through all the legal proceedings and as yet escaped the attention of blogs and Google?